ks, men were gathered as
closely as they could be packed, with their nerves strung to an intense
pitch as they awaited the decisive word. The hour of noon was fixed for
the French assault, and as it approached a lull in the cannonade told
that the critical moment was at hand.

At five minutes to twelve the word was given, and like a swarm of angry
bees the French sprang from their trenches and rushed in mad haste
across the narrow space dividing them from the Malakoff. The place, a
moment before quiet and apparently deserted, seemed suddenly alive. A
few bounds took the active line of stormers across the perilous
interval, and within a minute's time they were scrambling up the face
and slipping through the embrasures of the long-defiant fort. On they
came, stream after stream, battalion succeeding battalion, each dashing
for the embrasures, and before the last of the stormers had left the
trenches the flag of the foremost was waving in triumph above a bastion
of the fort.

The Russians had been taken by surprise. Very few of them were in the
fort. The destructive cannonade had driven them to shelter. It was in
the hands of the French by the time their foes were fully aware of what
had occurred. Then a determined attempt was made to recapture it, and
the Russian general hurled his men in successive storming columns upon
the work, vainly endeavoring to drive out its captors. From noon until
seven in the evening these furious efforts continued, thousands of the
Russians falling in the attempt. In the end the exhausted legions were
withdrawn, the French being left in possession of the work they had so
ably won and so valiantly held.

Meanwhile the British were engaged in their share of the assault. The
moment the French tricolor was seen waving from the parapet of the
Malakoff four signal rockets were sent up, and the dash on the Redan
began. It was made in less force than the French had used, and with a
very different result. The Russians were better prepared, and the space
to be crossed was wider, the assaulting column being rent with musketry
as it dashed over the interval between the trenches and the fort. On
dashed the assailants, through the abatis, which had been torn to
fragments by the artillery fire, into the ditch, and up the face of the
work. The parapet was scaled almost without opposition, the few Russians
there taking shelter behind their breastworks in the rear, whence they
opened fire on the assailing fo